Hardware Roundup: Intel Z77 Series Chipset Motherboard Edition

Intel has officially pulled the wraps off its Z77/Panther Point chipset designed with native support for the upcoming Ivy Bridge processors. Other features include 16 PCIe 3.0 lanes, up to 14 USB ports, four of which can be USB 3.0. You get six SATA ports supported through the Z77 PCH and a maximum of two of those can be SATA 6Gb/s with RAID support. OCC looks at the chipset and specifically the MSI Z77A-GD65 and Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H motherboards. We also have reviews on boards from ECS and Intel in this roundup.